Man accused of ‘sucker punching’ people on downtown Seattle streets

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Man accused of ‘sucker punching’ people on downtown Seattle streets

SEATTLE — King County prosecutors are expected to file charges Wednesday against a man accused of assaulting shoppers on the street.

“He got a pretty good hit on me. I can see right there in my lip and I got a shiner, just one of those things, a random deal,” victim Terrance Scott said Tuesday.

Scott has an unfortunate and painful battle wound on his lower lip.

He was a victim of Sunday’s alleged sucker-puncher in downtown Seattle and is now telling his story.

“I was just pushing the door open and all of a sudden this person comes toward me and BAM! When you get that kind of shock, I didn’t really feel pain. I just felt this, kind of like, what was that?” Scott said.

Scott never saw the punch coming and never saw his attacker until he was walking away.

It happened along the Pike/Pine corridor between 3rd Avenue and 7th Avenue.

Officers say four other random people were also attacked by Geron Lawrence.

Police say he may be mentally ill.

He’s been arrested 40 times since 2000 and this time it took 10 officers to take him into custody.

“Around here I never know who is coming out of where. Going into parks in the evening is now dangerous, too, because people are getting stabbed and what not or at the very least heckled and harassed,” downtown worker Niki Hurley said.

Just Tuesday, Dineen Martinez says she and fellow passengers found themselves in a dangerous situation when a man who appeared mentally ill got on a metro bus.

“He got in and he seemed aggravated and he sat down and he had a chain and he pulled out his knife and he was just standing there and we were all sitting there and didn’t know how to approach it so the bus driver came down and asked him to get off,” Martinez said.

Fortunately, no one was hurt, but a lot of people blame the way the mentally ill are treated; or, in many cases, not treated, due to budget cuts.

“A lot of the funding has been cut over the last few years and I think it’s left a lot of people homeless and without the meds that they need in order to function in this society that we’ve set up for them and I think that’s increased the violence problem threefold,” Hurley said.

Lawrence was expected in court Tuesday afternoon, but guards says he was to combative with them to be allowed in the courtroom.

9 comments

Joe

Shawn

Shawn

The same man did this in a bar on upper queen Anne! He opened the door and hit a women in the face! Four guys held him down until police arrived. They later said he is mentally unstable to be locked up, or not crazy enough to be in a mental ward. Messed up.

The World is Ending

The World is Ending

Pissed off in Seattle

Why don’t you politically correct appeasers (yes I mean you Q13) call it what it is… the knockout game! Oh but you are too sucked into your liberal agenda to call it that because you don’t want to sound racist or acknowledge that racism towards white people exists. (and no, I won’t call it reverse racism, because that’s another politically correct bullshit term. Racism is racism no matter what race is the victim)